Unemployment rises in China in September

MORTON GROVE, IL - OCTOBER 06: A "Now Hiring" sign is displayed in the window of a retail store October 6, 2006 in Morton Grove, Illinois. The U.S. Department of Labor's monthly employment report released today shows a dip in both job growth and the unemployment rate in September. (Photo by Tim Boyle/Getty Images)

Beijing: China’s unemployment rate stood at 5.2 percent in September — slightly up from the previous two months, data released by National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday showed.

The jobless rate for those aged between 25 and 60, the backbone of the labour force, remained stable in September, Xinhua news agency quoted NBS spokesman Sheng Laiyun as saying.

In the first three quarters of this year, China created more new jobs than the government had been aiming to do in the whole year, Sheng said.

Keeping the job market steady is one of the major priorities for the government. It set a target of creating at least 10 million new jobs in 2015.

This “surveyed” unemployment rate, based on research in 31 major cities, was first introduced in 2014 to serve as a supplement to the “registered” urban jobless rate after critics questioned the accuracy of the latter for its limited sample.

The surveyed rate was 5.06 percent at the end of June, when the registered rate stood at 4.04.